THE EPOCH CHRONICLES | ✔

twenty-four

Site One

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THIS IS gonna be hard. Amelia tapped her fingers to some unknown tune to relieve some anxious tension as she scanned the area from her position behind a large, cone-like palm.

The moon looked larger and more luminous than ever before as its light glinted off of the white of the TimePods; Amelia swallowed as she thought of the people inside. Maybe frightened. Probably terrified.

Between the man-made orbs were the less noticeable mounds of feather and muscle; the Tanycolagreuses were sleeping, or at the very least dozing, and the nearest one was so close she could count its yellowed teeth — though Amelia wasn't sure she could want to, as the stench of carrion was enough to make her pass out if she got too close.

This is a bad idea. She flexed her knees, getting ready to run nevertheless. It had never been on her bucket list to intentionally get meat-eating dinosaurs to chase after her (for the third time that day!) but the plan, however horrible, called for it — and it was the only option they had.

In the swirling gloom (I hate jungles) she spied a sun-darkened arm waving back and forth from behind another collection of parts a few hundred yards to her left. Her cue.

Amelia exhaled quickly, pumping herself up and trying to banish the negative thoughts she'd been having seconds before, before she grabbed hold of the wooden torch at her side, vaguely recognizable from video games placed in medieval times.

The wood was wet with fat and other horrid stuffs she didn't let her mind browse over; the piece of cooked meat — "They have a taste for that," Bradley had told them — speared onto its pointed end would hopefully save her life, if the predators went for the meat instead of her. Hopefully.

The other end of the torch was wrapped in chemical-smelling moss and algae, which was incredibly flammable, according to their ever-faithful Jurassic Period Tarzan.

Amelia immediately felt bad for thinking of poor Bradley like that, and held the smoldering piece of the coal he had allocated to her to the moss. Maybe she should've been better prepared for the whoomph and rush of flame; the flickering red singed her fingers and she would've released a scream if a bunch of carnivores hadn't been nearby.

Clutching her burnt hand to her stomach, and inquisitive (yet thankfully drowsy) screeches and squalls behind her echoing in the dark, Amelia ran with just as much vigor as before, her feet kicking up mulch and dirt. Her head pounded with too much adrenaline to do anything else but review what she had to do.

"There's a peat bog alongside the marsh we're in right now," Bradley had told them, pointing to his crude map drawn in the mud alongside the hut-on-stilts. "And, if you didn't know, peat sticks fast. That'll keep 'em occupied while we move the eggs and start opening the TimePods."

"Which one will we do?" Lale had interjected, staring at the map in interest. "Open the TimePods or move the eggs?"

Amelia had answered, assuming that same authority as before. "We only move the eggs if we can't help it. Dinosaurs could be sensitive to different scents around their young, and could abandon the eggs. Like birds."

"Wouldn't you just adopt them like Fido up there?" Bradley had motioned to the hut-on-stilts, where she had left the egg, mouth twisted in something like a smirk.

"That's besides the point." Amelia had folded her arms with a glare, wondering how anyone could be so childish while lives were at stake. "The point is, try not to move the eggs."